BOOK REVIEW ‘FROSTED GLASS’ BY SABARNA ROY
Book: Frosted Glass
Author: Sabarna Roy
Page count: 347
Publisher: Leadstart Publishing Private Limited
Rating: 5/5 star
Recommendation: Highly
“This mask will go away this year
That mask will go away that year
These are the words Rahul’s ma remembers Rahul had said when he left home two year back.
Where had Rahul gone two years ago never to come back home?
His ma says – “Rahul did not talk to me after those words.”
Between this year and that year
There are other years.
Between years and masks Rahul had held-
The scents of his ma’s bosom
The simmering shadow of a gun
Nanu’s fragile fingers
The yellowing photograph of Rupa who never
Came back after making it in tinsel town
Rangamshima’s spasms between his legs
The Krishnachura tree where they played hide-n-seek
Fried malpuas dipped in jelly on a cloudy
Autumn afternoon
And then tired of holding all these
Rahul withdrew his hand one night and let
Matters fly and
Fall…
I could not meet Rahul even in oblivion.
One evening, as I opened my e-mail box
I found a message from him that goes like this-
“Nanu, you believe the sky is blue.
I believed the sky is blue.
But, Nanu, sky is space.
And, space has no colour.
When the masks are gone, the man does not exist for you.
You do not see him though he is
Breathing down your neck.
Only silently, unrelenting space falling
From within the cups of your palms.”
The stories, set in Calcutta, bring to the fore the darkness lurking in the human psyche and bare the baser instincts. The stories, compactly written and marked by insightful dialogues that raise contemporary issues like man-woman relationship and its strains, morals, and ethics, environmental degradation, class inequality, rapid and mass-scale unmindful urbanization, are devoid of sentimentalization.
The book contains one storyline consisting of 14 stories and one poem consisting of 21 poems.
The overall narration is done amazingly.
The writing style of the author is lovely.
The cover of the book totally fits with the title of the book.
Source: hopeofreadersworld.com
